Manchester United legend Gary Neville sacked by Valencia

Poor old Gary Neville. Young, dynamic, intelligent, entrepreneurial, ambitious. He was supposed to parachute into Valencia and snap a talented but underperforming team into life, but instead, the former Manchester United right-back has been sacked less than four months into the job. The sad and damning truth is that he was probably only given so much time because of his friendship with chairman Peter Lim.

Neville was probably hoping to impress this season and earn a long-term deal at the Mestalla, with a view to ultimately moving onto a managerial position at United or with the English national team, where he remains assistant to Roy Hodgson. But as it is, it's difficult to see where he could go from here. He'll probably be hoping a smaller team takes a gamble (probably in England, where there's no tricky language barrier to negotiate).

Anyway, if he is one day going to return to Old Trafford, it seems a long way off. Chin up, Gaz.